Temporary philosophy job at Glasgow: www.jobs.gla.ac.uk/job/lecturer...

Been thinking how we're all like The Ship of Theseus - all the stuff we're made of is constantly in flux, but the pattern that makes us *us* remains...

Looking forward to presenting tomorrow in this excellent series on Representations! 😊 www.pe.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/philosophie/...

Not 1, not 2, but 3 very nice papers on brain wiring from Liqun Luo and colleagues in @currentbiology.bsky.social (focus on the roles of Ten3 and Lphn2 for circuit assembly) 🧪🧠🧬 1. www.cell.com/current-biol... 2. www.cell.com/current-biol... 3. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Damn AI for forcing me to question everything I now see. Because if this is real, it is extraordinary, and how is this alien being not better known?

In episode 840, I talk with Dr. Alicia Juarrero about her phenomenal book, Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence. #Philosophy #CognitiveScience #Science youtu.be/XKamoQkahxw

"My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees." - Douglas Adams

'The government has no clear plan for universities at risk of insolvency, despite the fact that such a financial failure would deal a “severe and lasting blow” to the UK’s reputation for outstanding research, a committee...has warned.' Finally, recognition that teaching & research joined at hip.

New paper showing insufficient evidence for neuroimaging features to define reproducible, biologically valid, & clinically meaningful schizophrenia subtypes. The subtypes identified to date likely reflect continuous variation within the disorder rather than discrete, biologically distinct entities.

Guianan Cock-of-the-rock. This is a striking South American bird known for the male's brilliant orange plumage and large, semi-circular crest, while females are duller olive-gray. A type of cotinga, it lives in tropical rainforests near rocky outcrops and gorges. 📸: @wildlife_by_marcelo

It's like our growing knowledge of the microbiome. Very interesting basic science following from amazing new ways to measure what's actually happening in and on our bodies, but that hasn't yet generated many (any?) actionable insights, beyond helping food companies sell you stuff you don't need.

Academics driving this hype don't really accomplish much, other than to complicate the information landscape for decision makers, increasing their susceptibility to shady nutraceuticals and other "supplements", since we know the correct lifestyle-based advice is so hard actually achieve.

A reminder that "Biological Aging" isn't a real thing. It's just a hyped up-term for biomarkers, and knowledge of biomarkers is only useful if that specific knowledge leads to better outcomes through improved decision making. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Replacing AI with “cocaine” is brilliant

This feed is so worth following. Usually makes me smile and we all know we need more reasons to smile more these days!

One year later - my reflections on what's happened to US science since the National Science Foundation grant terminations last year. The problem of misinformation isn't going away, but our ability to study and understand it is under attack. 1/ 🧪 www.tennessean.com/story/opinio...

California mice are paragons of monogamy. The neuronal bases of how they (or any other species) remember their partners is unknown. We found a surprisingly important role for hippocampal CA1 as the pair bond develops and a concomitantly diminishing role of CA2. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

This influx of wonderful books I've received recently makes me think we're enjoying a high point in natural history writing just now. (My reviews of some of them are on the way...)

the best map of Europe

Someone, every 18 months or so: “Heyyyy, what about Bohmian mechanics? What if that solves everything?”

Fucking incredible. Play this for every university administrator in the nation. She says AI is the next “industrial revolution” and all the students BOO loudly. And then when she says “a few years ago, AI was not part of our lives” they all CHEER. She is shocked by their reactions. I am not!!!

Yeah. This is the worry when you have a man who hates everything about public health in charge of the CDC.

Now out in Nature Machine Intelligence @NatMachIntell “Adopting a human developmental visual diet yields robust and shape-based AI vision”: doi.org/10.1038/s422.... A wonderful case where brain inspiration improved AI. With @martisamuser.bsky.social, Radek Cichy and @timkietzmann.bsky.social .

A more accurate title would be "Kennedy is wasting taxpayer dollars on a confirmation bias-fueled witch hunt in an attempt to drive the return of vaccine-preventable diseases."

That is one of the creepiest phrases I've heard this crank say. Total Gilead-speak.

If we don't do better at communicating the real (admittedly complex) science, we leave a gap that gets filled with pseudoscience, leaving people dangerously misinformed and vulnerable to grifters

Understanding the Genetics of Autism www.brainfacts.org/diseases-and... - a primer I wrote for @brainfacts.org to explain what we actually know about the (complex) genetics of the condition cc @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social @erictopol.bsky.social pol.bsky.social @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social

This is the University of Central Florida. So many people really have no idea how much kids hate this shit.

I know that it's Calvinball now but saying you're going to dismantle a district because it's 47% African American sure seems like the intentional racial discrimination that's still banned

One characteristic of the men who currently lead the US health system: The “eew” factor They spew such creepy stuff, day in, day out (remember RFK Jr talking about the sperm count of teens? 🤯) I mean “under-babied”?

john brown basically this

Not a surprise that this fucking liar is lying to congress and the general public. Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/h...

sure gas is headed to $8/gallon but at least cornell got rid of their gender studies classes. or at least i think they did, i haven’t checked and if im being honest i wouldnt really know if they had or hadnt because it doesnt affect me but it makes $8/gallon gas all worth it

"Scientists don't want you to know-" Buddy there are so many things I, as a scientist, want you to know and the only thing stopping me from writing more papers and posts about it and then starting a podcast to tell you even MORE things is that I am limited by hours in the day

Rethinking hierarchy: the auditory system as an integrated cortical–subcortical network www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The new website for the Complex Systems Lab www.complexsystemslab.org is now available and will soon be completed with all kinds of information and updates, links to our recent papers, book recommendations, videos and podcasts.

Paper: doi.org/10.64898/202... Code: github.com/mol-evol/pan... Pushback and alternative readings very welcome.

Upshot: the pangenome is the inevitable solution to prokaryotic life under uncertainty. "Accessory" implies dispensable. The framework says they are essential, just not to every cell in every generation. A gene rarely needed is not a gene unneeded. It is insurance.

Horizontal gene transfer is the insurance mechanism. Bacteria swap genes between lineages. Without HGT, costly-on-average genes get purged. With HGT, they sit at stable low frequencies, available when conditions shift. Mean fitness drops slightly with HGT. That dip is the premium.

In simulations, three strategies with identical arithmetic mean fitness (=1.0) but different variance produce wildly different outcomes. After 1,000 generations the high-variance specialist makes populations 10^63 times smaller than the zero-variance generalist. Variance kills.

New preprint. I've been chewing on why bacteria have pangenomes for years. Most species carry a distributed gene pool far larger than any one genome holds. E. coli has ~163,000 rare genes across the species. Each individual cell carries about 5,000. Why? A 🧵👇

Irish woman, 18, wins European category for 2026 Earth Prize.

Ok pals. Looking to move all my teaching materials open and online, and am developing new modules that I want to start off this way. Content = reading, quizzes, videos, and code tutorials. Opinions on the best platform? Good examples of best practice I can steal from? Many thanks.

'Scientific advancement depends on freedom, openness, and truth - the very values fascism eventually destroys. Our collective response will shape the future.'

Very cool example of how regulatory changes modulate conserved developmental programs to generate morphological novelty (work by @marketa-kau.bsky.social @axelvisel.bsky.social & colleagues) On “making faces” in birds & mammals🧪🧬 www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Good luck getting the message across. I've been wrestling with this in the context of dyslexia for a long time. doi.org/10.3390/brai...

From the Fort Worth Zoo (@fortworthzoo.bsky.social) FB & just in time for Mother's Day, freshly-hatched masked lapwing chicks (Vanellus miles). Native to Australia, NZ, NG, they're fierce parents, willing to charge/swoop at animals that threaten their babies.

“Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orleans’s days are still numbered,” he added. “It will be surrounded by open water, and you can’t keep an island situated below sea level afloat. There’s no amount of money that can do that.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Distributed acoustic sensing or DAS is a truly AMAZING seismology technique that uses laser pulses to turn a fiber optic cable into a string of tiny seismometers. DAS doesn't just pick up vibrations in the Earth, though. Exposed coils of cables can easily pick up human speech within 5 meters!